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Owners Warn That Hudson County Newspaper Could Be Closed

The owners of The Jersey Journal, a newspaper that for more than a century has chronicled the colorful history of Hudson County, have warned their employees that it will cease publication if their unions do not agree to significant cost reductions within 30 days.

Union officials said the paper's owners have demanded that half the staff be laid off. The owners declined to discuss specifics of their proposal.

The paper's daily circulation of about 40,000 is roughly a third of what it was in The Journal's heyday in the 1970's, said Steve Newhouse, a member of the publishing family that owns the newspaper as part of its Advance Publications Newspaper Group, which owns several New Jersey newspapers, including the state's largest, The Star-Ledger of Newark. Mr. Newhouse, whose grandfather, S. I. Newhouse, bought The Journal a half-century ago in one of his earliest acquisitions, said the family hoped to save the paper through ''intensive negotiations'' with its three unions, including the Newspaper Guild.

But, Mr. Newhouse said, The Journal has been steadily losing circulation and advertisers for decades, as the number of English-speaking residents has declined in Jersey City and other parts of Hudson County, and closing the 135-year-old broadsheet is a very real possibility.

''The Jersey Journal is certainly at a crossroads, and right now we're negotiating with all the unions regarding conditions that we hope will allow the paper to continue,'' Mr. Newhouse said. ''There's no question that the trend has been for Spanish-speaking people, the growth of that population, and the decline of the English-speaking population,'' he said. ''We've had a decent mix of local and national advertisers, but the advertising market, too, has shrunk over the years.''

Closing of The Journal would leave Hudson County -- a densely populated, largely working-class area with a history of political corruption scandals -- without a daily newspaper. Advance bought out the old Hudson Dispatch several years ago and folded it into its north Hudson edition of The Journal.

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Ron Leir, president of Local 42 of the Newspaper Guild, which represents 35 reporters, editors and editorial assistants, said that during a meeting this morning, management presented the unions with a plan to lay off roughly half the paper's staff. Mr. Leir said the layoffs would include 17 newsroom staff members, 9 truck drivers and 19 sales and other business employees.

Mr. Leir said the offer included what management termed ''enhanced'' severance packages for the laid-off Guild members, and that their remaining newsroom colleagues, who earn $543 to $795 per week, would receive flat raises of $10 per week. The union has been without a contract since June 2000.

''Of course, my main concern is the well-being of 35 Guild members,'' Mr. Leir said. ''If there's a way of keeping the paper afloat and protecting as many people as we can, that's what we're fighting for.''

Mr. Newhouse said the demographic problems are unique to The Jersey Journal, and that layoffs are not planned at Advance's other newspapers, which include The Staten Island Advance, The Times in Trenton, The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, The Oregonian in Portland and The Star-Ledger. There has been speculation among union members, local elected officials and others in recent years that Advance would close The Journal and begin publishing a Hudson County edition of The Star-Ledger, which won a Pulitzer Prize last year in photography. But Mr. Newhouse said there were no such plans.

''The only plan that we have,'' he said, ''is to work to reach an agreement with The Jersey Journal's unions to continue to publish.''

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A version of this article appears in print on January 3, 2002, on Page B00007 of the National edition with the headline: Owners Warn That Hudson County Newspaper Could Be Closed. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe